On the Contrary

Retrograde has the meaning of moving backwards.  With orbits of satellites or moons a retrograde orbit is one that is slowly, through the force of gravity, sinking back toward the planet it orbits.  That is a wonderful analogy for America today.  When we struck forth in 1776 to create a new nation, and when in 1789 we ratified our Constitution, we reached for the stars.  We tried to free ourselves from religious bondage that had wasted the world’s history for hundreds of years.  We tried to base a government on the natural rights of our citizens and rational dialogue.  Today, if you watch what goes for Republican debate, we are moving back to the Dark Ages.

If you listen to Billy Graham’s son, Franklin, there should be a religious test for office.  That is why the Muslim thing is thrown around about President Obama.  Muslims need not apply.  It is against the very foundation of our Constitution (actually Article VI, paragraph 3), and frankly what should you care about his religion, only what his policies are.  Franklin Graham represents everything that is wrong with religion and why organized religion could bring us the Inquisition.  But that is only the tip of the iceberg.  What is really going on is to say to evangelicals and other religious purists, that if you are not like us, if you don’t think like us, you are not fit to hold office.  Ideas don’t count.  Policies don’t count.  Adherence to religious dogma is what counts.  Purity tests for all.  Retrograde doesn’t even begin to describe our descent into the Dark Ages and ignorance.

Then we have Rick Santorum and the Catholic Church (not to mention the State of Virginia) trying to return women to domesticated slaves.  The really clever thing is that they have turned the argument on its head.  President Obama wisely said that like Viagra, contraception must be covered by our nation’s health care insurers.  But the child molesters that masquerade as Bishops (they at best tolerated it) and Rick Santorum claimed that President Obama was forcing Catholics to go against their basic beliefs (the domestic enslavement of women).  What the Catholic Church and Rick Santorum are about is using institutions to force their belief on others by denying them the choice.  I always wondered if a man was virtuous if he was never tempted?  Instead of believing what they believe and holding their followers accountable, they believe what they believe and want to make sure you can’t act in any way contrary to those beliefs.  How can that be virtue?

Then there is the State of Virginia (and others) who have decided that women, if they want an abortion, must go through an invasive vaginal procedure. An ultrasound will be done by a vaginal probe.  Many women call it forced rape by the state.  This once again is the crowd who wants to get government out of our lives, except when it comes to their religious beliefs which they want to force down the throat of the rest of us.  Gee, if guys wanted Viagra prescribed shouldn’t they have an anal exam to make sure they aren’t gay?  What’s the difference?  It is using the state to identify  humiliate their citizens who don’t believe as they do even though it is within their rights to act that way.

What can I say?  This is what is being discussed as rational political dialogue in the 21s century.  We have let ignorance and religious dogma once again overcome civilization and we are falling back into the dark ages where rational though could get you killed.  This is what the present crop of Republicans have brought us and anyone who calls themselves a Republican should be ashamed.  No they may not support them, but their conservative belief system is what created these monsters and when voting time comes, they will still vote for them.  Conservatism is the force that is holding America back and keeping us from being a great nation once again.  It is kind of funny in a way.  They so claim to love America and to want to reclaim it.  But what they really want to reclaim is the Dark Ages and the death of the American Dream.  Yes Virginia, Republicans are evil.  They are enabling this lot.

In my consulting travels I spend a lot of time with true conservatives.  I try my best not to say anything because we have a job to do and we should not get distracted into politics that will, quite frankly, takes us nowhere.  But I am always intrigued at how they think.   There are not two sets of facts in the world and contrary to conventional wisdom, both sides don’t equally equivocate.  By and large, progressives pretty much tell it like it is and conservatives twist it mercilessly.

Oh sure, you can find the anecdotal case where some left wing nut job is off the deep end, but take a step back and consider where we are today and what conservatives are telling us.  Global warming?  Doesn’t exist except of course that every respectable scientific body today endorses it.  Evolution?  Oh why go there.  Lower taxes will spur the economy, except as a percentage of GDP they are the lowest in 60 years and where are the jobs?  High tides lift all ships, except the vast majority of us are losing ground while we have the mass transfer of wealth to a small percentage of our population.  We have the best medical care in the world, except we don’t and it costs twice as much as what others pay for better outcomes.  The market place will create jobs if government will just get out of the way, except it got out of the way and the financial Masters of the Universe almost destroyed us. These are all indisputable facts supported by tons of data, and yet conservatives are in denial about it.  Why?

Well a conversation I had recently may shed some light.  Remember with conservatives, pointing out the actual data just gets them frothing at the mouth and does no good.  You have to understand that this is a visceral thing.  It is highly emotional and rationality doesn’t have a chance.  It is all about order and justice.  They believe in it.  It is at the core of their belief system.  It is a the core of their terror.  Many studies have shown that Progressives are more open to change than Conservatives, hence the term conservative.  At some deep psychological level we are either predisposed to handling innovation and change or we are terrified of it.  This has, I think deep roots in our survival as a species.  Being too adventurous in a hostile world could get you killed.  But not trying new things and being open to change, could also destine you to the trash heap of evolution.  Seen any Neanderthals lately?

So conservatives like to keep it simple and we are back to order and justice.  If things are ordered and you follow the rules, justice follows.  It is as simple as that for Conservatives.  It allows them to order anything and understand their place in that order.  That is why Conservatives are so arrogant about their place in life.  They earned it, they deserve it, and those that are less fortunate, well hell, it has nothing to do with fortune, but with discipline and rule following. Paying taxes simply allows government to reward those who don’t deserve it.   It orders the world’s chaos by blaming the victim.  One has to think no farther than looking at Conservatives and their religious beliefs that tend to be dogmatic and rigid, uninformed by the injustice of those beliefs in the real world.  The market place is the ultimate objective decider of fates if you just let it operate without interference.  If things are bad, blame the government as interfering and making it bad.  Never question the basic assumption about the market place, or for that matter, their religious tyrannical beliefs.

Okay back to the conversation.  It was a simple statement, but it embodied all of the above.  “What this economy needs is just to let entrepreneurs operate freely and they will create the jobs and economy that will take off.”  See, that mean old government is keeping us from excelling.  Order is out of whack because government interferes with the natural order of things.  Except, during the Bush years regulations simply weren’t enforced, tax rates were the lowest in 60 years and the middle class tanked.  Or even more salient today, innovate all you want, bring on great products, but if the middle class doesn’t have sufficient income to support a thriving economy, there will be no one to buy it.  It really is the chicken and the egg.  Which comes first, the goods people want to buy (supply), or the pent up money people have to spend (demand).  The answer which Conservative don’t want to hear, is demand.  And demand means first creating jobs so people have disposable income to buy stuff.  That would force you to admit that government has an important role to play and that brings into question the whole justice and order thing.  Could it be that no matter how carefully you follow the rules and regulate your life, shit happens?  If that is the case, is it not government’s role to keep the playing field level?  Oh my God, heresy.

So for Conservatives, chaos reigns if those they perceive as deserving of their fate get a helping hand from government.  It interferes with the natural order and justice in the world.  It terrifies them and allows them to try to reinvent reality to maintain their belief system.  Until shit happens to them, they are oblivious to it, and then it is a special case.  How do you explain the Log Cabin Republicans (gay Republicans)? Because they are Conservatives in that they believe in the order and justice thing, and just see the Conservative denial of their rights as an aberration instead of a logical extension of their belief system.  How do you explain a Conservative who sees the light on gay rights after their own child comes out?  Until it becomes personalized, they can simply shut it out in a whirl of denial or reinventing reality.

My favorite is austerity.  Yes, that was part of the conversation too.  Europe just had to get things back in order and they can’t afford all the entitlements they want.  Austerity is enforcing the natural order of things.  It means that justice will prevail if you follow the rules and the free loaders are put back in their place.  Evil doers must be punished to realign the natural order of things.  Except it doesn’t work.  Every nation that has gone on an austerity kick has seen their GDP not recover, but decline further.  While it violates in a basic way, Conservative ideology about blame the victim, ECON 101 and the data from our experiment with austerity has shown a disastrous outcome.  In order to get out of debt, you have to grow the economy and austerity simply depresses it.  Paul Krugman put a wonder graph out about what happens to countries that forgot everything we learned in the last 80 years or so and decided on punishment as the way forward (Austerity and Growth).  The data is incontrovertible and overwhelming, yet Conservatives will twist themselves into pretzels to try to explain it away because it violates their whole concept of the natural order of things.  Bad things only happen to bad people right?  And if you do bad things, you must be punished.

I guess I can rest my case with watching the Republican Presidential Primary where up is down and down is up, where facts are so distorted that only true believers could accept these people as rational humans, much less as leaders of our country.  It is where this conservative logic has finally taken us to maintain its basic underlying beliefs, into the world of fantasy.  Melissa Harris-Perry, on her new show on MSNBC, made a wonderful point the other day.  Our democracy needs a strong and vibrant two party system to work.  When one party gets out of hand, as power always corrupts, the other side is there to right the balance with new ideas.  But the problem we face with the Republican Party is that they have no new ideas.  They only have the old failed ones that they cling to with all their might, while reinventing reality to make that possible.  They have got theirs and they selfishly don’t want to risk having to share.  Until they actually become a rational and thinking political entity again, we have a real problem in this country.  I only hope the rest of America sees the absolute failure of conservative ideas and puts them out of their misery.

It is early and I am waiting for a flight to Honolulu and I am having some random thoughts as I peruse the paper.  You know, that thing that apparently fewer and fewer Americans bother with anymore.  I was reading about Whitney Houston’s death and the fact that she probably drowned after taking “prescription” drugs in her bath tub.  You can’t help sadly marveling at how a person who could make such beautiful music and was so talented needed a habit of cocaine to make her life bearable.  Listening to her music was like a drug in that it was so beautiful.  She was beautiful, talented, so what was up with the drugs?  So I was thinking maybe last night at the Grammys, some in that audience who are also drug abusers could maybe take an object lesson?

Then I realized how foolish that was.  When you are addicted to drugs, you can’t hear and you certainly can’t think straight.  And then my mind leaped to our Republican Primary Campaign where these pandering, or maybe just loony candidates are telling the most outrageous and easily debunked lies and the conservative right is lapping it up.  Then I wondered if there is a parallel.  Is the behavior of drug addled cocaine and meth abusers any different than the behavior of religious and Tea Party addled conservatives who deny reality, wildly make up outrageous claims, while denying the very government that brought them their prosperity.  If drug addicts live in a world of denial, they have nothing on the Republican Party right now.

Yes, I have been missing in action.  I have been working to support my grape habit and it has detracted me from more important pursuits.  I will be traveling for the next two weeks, so don’t expect to much of my whining for a while.

Oh the Republicans have a hot one here.  They are claiming that President Obama is forcing religions to violate their basic beliefs.  But they have it just backwards.  Here is the issue:

On Jan. 20, the Obama Administration issued a decision to include contraceptives as part of the package of women’s preventive health services in the Affordable Care Act (ACA, the 2010 health reform law). Beginning in August 2012, all of the services in this package will be available in new insurance plans without any out-of-pocket costs to women. In a country where half of all pregnancies are unplanned and the cost of birth control is high, this decision is an important step in promoting women’s health. The rule specifically exempts pervasively religious institutions like certain houses of worship from offering their employees birth control coverage as part of their health insurance.

Now think about this.  Religious hospitals that take and administer federal programs to their benefit  have employees who are not necessarily of that religion, yet they can dictate what care they can receive based upon their religious beliefs?  Who here is being intolerant.  What if the hospital decided to offer plans that refused hysterectomies because it interfered with the natural reproductive cycle even when medically required?  Where do you draw the line?

What is interesting is what the Republicans are promoting is the religious intolerance of organizations and their ability to force their views on others.  Government is actually supposed to prevent this kind of thing.  This, by the way is the same group who would like to dictate their own religious views on when life begins on all of us.  Note also the the biggest complainers are the Catholic Church, that institution of moral guidance that allowed child rape to be ignored.  But the religious intolerance gets even more interesting.

The nation’s leading breast-cancer charity, Susan G. Komen for the Cure, announced it was halting its partnerships with Planned Parenthood affiliates in providing breast cancer screening.  The stated reason for this was that they would no longer contribute to agencies that were under the cloud of investigation.  The “investigation” is a trumped up look at Planned Parenthood by one of the abortion Nazis in the Republican caucus with absolutely no evidence of any wrong doing.  The reality is that a small but vocal group had threatened to pull their support from the Cure if they continued funding breast cancer screening done by Planned Parenthood.

Now think about it.  Poor women will be deprived of possible life saving screening because the abortion Nazis don’t approve of Planned Parenthood’s other activities like giving poor woman a choice.  Needless to say there was a great outcry and the Cure had to backtrack.  But that is what these people who want their religious freedom are up to, forcing their religious beliefs down your throats.  I hope women wake up on election day, because the Republican Party will be appointing Supreme Court Justices that will rule, like in the People’s United case, against the freedom of the common man.

Here is what I never get.  If you believe that contraception is wrong, don’t use it.  If you believe woman should never terminate a pregnancy, don’t terminate yours, but to take these beliefs and force them down the throats of the rest of us through government or private institutions is just plain wrong and is the real tyranny we see today.

Now I have to go catch a plane to San Antonio.

I would comment on the Republican candidates, except they are superfluous.  They, and the political discussions around them, are just more of the problem.  They offer us no solutions and just a continuation of what we have done.  Their whole political approach is based upon feeding anger with outrage, and of course blame.  But when it comes to a new direction, it is just more of the policies or lack thereof that has caused our problems. Here are a couple of examples of our real life experiences that point out our going nowhere.  Sadly, until we personally experience the consequences of our policies, most of us are oblivious.

A few days ago I heard about a young Hispanic man I was acquainted with who was asked to go to a border town to straighten out his papers, and then they deported him. He was two when his parents brought him here.  He was a good student and a smart, hard working contributor to our society.  America is his home and we deported him.  It is so unfair, it is so wasteful, and yet this is what REPUBLICANS have wrought (DREAM Act).  Got to punish those evil doers, right?  Meanwhile I picked up the paper Sunday to read in the Sacramento Bee, “Colleges forced to cut key courses“.  In California our junior colleges have been the route for many who have stumbled in high school or beyond, who have to work and can’t attend college full time, to get on track and get the education they need to become successful.  With the massive cuts in education, we can no longer educate our future.  How dumb is that? Here is some data that Paul Krugman presented on the impact of the cutting of spending from state and local governments:

“But it’s even worse than he says. Why? Because if you look at what’s being cut, it’s heavily focused on investment:”

As Paul said, “That is, we’re sacrificing the future as well as the present. Oh, and the cuts that aren’t falling on investment in physical capital are largely falling on human capital, that is, education.“  This austerity is insane, we should know better, and we have been stampeded into fearing the debt by the Republicans with some help from feeble minded Democrats (or just pandering to the mob), and in effect, we are eating our seed crop.  I would sum up with another quote from Paul:

“It’s hard to overstate just how wrong all this is. We have a situation in which resources are sitting idle looking for uses — massive unemployment of workers, especially construction workers, capital so bereft of good investment opportunities that it’s available to the federal government at negative real interest rates. Never mind multipliers and all that (although they exist too); this is a time when government investment should be pushed very hard. Instead, it’s being slashed.  What an utter disaster.”

An utter disaster is an understatement.  The way forward is not rocket science,  As I pointed out yesterday, we will all have to pay (no pain, no gain).  That path was laid out by economist (one of many who we are ignoring) Michael Spence, a Nobel Laureate, and professor at NYU:

“I am sure you have heard this, but the great depression came to an end in WWII and two things happened at that point.  One, there was a huge fiscal stimulus because we could not finance a war effort on current income, and then we got rid of it over time, and the second one was that we went to the people and said you know what, it is a war and we are going to have to invest a huge amount of our resources in this and your consumption levels are going to have to go down because we can’t keep them up and make this big investment.  We just don’t have the resources and because it was a war, people said okay.  And so we created this powerful engine that not only took us through the war, but took us into the post period in pretty high gear…If we really wanted to overcome this one fast, then what would happen is a political leader would go and say this isn’t a war, but it is that sort of challenge and create recovery (war) bonds…I mean that is pretty politically unrealistic, but that would really put a jet engine behind this thing over time.”

It isn’t hard.  We need to start investing massively in the future, and making all of us pay for it.  But Republicans offer a free ride saying lets just do austerity, just remove regulation and government interference, and let us all keep our money and it will just magically happen.  Democrats tell you that we just need to tax the rich, and oh yes, austerity for all.  Sorry, they are all lies.  We need to get serious about moving forward and we all will have to pay.  Suppose you could get elected with that message?  Maybe when things get bad enough or we just get tired of standing in one place.  I will tell you this.  Republicans will never get you there.  Democrats have an inkling, but lack the courage.  Maybe the 99% can get their act together.  Remember, just being angry is not enough.

Now this one is really rich. Newt claims he has the torch from the Reagan Revolution passed to him by Ronnie. Now there are two ironies here. The first, which the press is all over, is that this is a total fabrication and misrepresentation of the relationship which is true enough, but not the real issue.

The second irony is that the real issue is that the way Conservatives see Reagan is a fabrication of their ideological needs.  Although he made us feel good, he started this country’s long slide into me-first and not investing in tomorrow. This is a torch that should have been extinguished 20 years ago with a massive fire fighting response.   Don’t you just love a discussion to nowhere by the Republicans and the media?

When you finally understand that the government is the problem, greed is good, and less regulated business is our savior with low taxes and no investment in our infrastructure is how we got into this mess, you understand that Ronnie was a nice man, but was a disaster for the direction of our country.  Remember, he thought Medicare was the end of capitalism as we know it.  Let those old people die.

I was watching Up with Chris Hayes this Saturday morning and he had a conservative on his show, Josh Barro, who stated the obvious, but I get ahead of myself.  The current crop of conservatives we have today believe government should just go away.  It is the ultimate case of denial.  They ignore what government has provided them and see all that they have achieved as somehow all their own accomplishment.  Government just gets in the way in their little minds.  Now it is certainly true in the anecdotal sense that Government can be a problem and certainly hinders business.  But they fail to extend their anecdotal case to the general.  Sure there are regulations that make things difficult, and for sure there are many that ought to be retracted.  But many of those pesky rules keep us safe, allow us clean air and water, and keep our neighbors from infringing on our rights even though we resent them wHen they prevent us from infringing on theirs.

Conservatives also believe that there is a thing called flow down, except it does not exist and there is tons of data out there to demonstrate that.  But when you want a tax break, when you want to extend your free ride on the backs of others, you need to believe it exists.  The other option is to just say government isn’t necessary, but then you have to ask yourself who builds the roads and infrastructure, who makes education affordable, and who sees to it that we get affordable medical care?  But then again you can lie to yourself and say that all that is just giving away your hard earned tax dollars to those who are lazy and waste it, but it is a lie.  Again you can find the anecdotal example, but not in the aggregate. The reality is that government made us what we are today and to throw it off now will hurt everyone.

So conservative lie to themselves and to their faithful.  Maybe that is why the current crop of Presidential candidates is so looney.  You have to be looney to believe the stuff they spout, and you have to be in absolute denial to listen to it.  I mean we just went down their road during the Bush years (they lie to themselves saying Bush wasn’t a real Republican, we were not responsible, the Democrats made us do it).  But upon examination it is all a big lie.  They simply want to take up where we left off and hope for a better outcome.  Okay, so the Republicans lie to themselves and to their faithful so money can buy government, and the rich can continue the transfer of wealth to themselves.  So what do Democrats lie about?

That is where Mr. Josh Barro made the obviou and valuable point about the hypocrisy of Democrats.  He pointed out that Progressives believe that government has an important role to play.  Then he pointed out that even if we force equity in our tax code, it does not solve the problem (paying for what we want).  And he is exactly right and that is the BIG LIE that Democrats are telling their faithful.  Don’t worry, we will just take the country back from the wealthy and make them pay their fair share and things will be rosy.  No it won’t.  The reality is we have been on this binge for thirty years and we are all going to have to pay more to make up for our neglect.  Democrats fail to tell the truth about this obvious fact.  When you get right down to it, both parties are promising a free ride, a chicken in every pot, and it is smoke and mirrors.

Republicans tell you that we just cut taxes and reduce regulation and voilà, the economy takes off.  Except it hasn’t, the middle class is missing in action, and our infrastructure is falling apart because we don’t invest in ourselves.  Our competitiveness is creeping downward, we are now 37th in medical outcomes, I can’t remember how far our education system has fallen, and this will all be fixed with state’s rights, lower taxes, and less regulation.  Then we get the Democrats rightly telling us we need to invest in ourselves and government has a big role to play.  So far so good, and then they say, like the Republicans, we don’t have to pay for it, we will get the wealthy who can afford it to.  The only difference is the Republicans have already proved that less government, etc., etc., doesn’t work except for the 1%.  The Democrats have the right solution, just lie about how we can pay for it.

You would think that we Progressives would tell you the truth, that if we want a future then we have to invest in tomorrow, we are going to have to spend big time, and even with all the jobs, we are not going to have as much disposable income, because we are going to have to reinvest that income in all the things we want (See It’s the Conservatives Stupid and economist Michael Spence).  That simply means higher taxes for all of us.  But we don’t hear that.  Maybe the politicians think it is a losing message.  Maybe it is, but it is a true one.  I wonder when we will ever grow up and face our responsibilities like adults?  So one side tells us that if we pay less we get more, and the other side says we need to pay more, but we can get the other guy to do it.  I hate cliches, but the reality is, no pain, no gain.

My guess is that most of you have read the articles in the New York Times about why Apple shipped their manufacturing to China (How the U.S. Lost Out on IPhone Work), and about the horrible conditions in the plants there (In China Human Costs are Built into IPad).  Note I am writing this on an Apple NoteBook, read the articles on my IPad2, and have my trusty IPhone at my side.  But these two articles raise important questions about who we are and where we are going.  And even more important, they raise interesting questions about our conventional wisdom about our problems off shoring jobs and leadership.

Lets start with the first one about why we couldn’t do the work here.  The first article points out a couple of important things.  First the added labor costs are small compared to the total price of the IPad so that was not the driving factor.  What is the driving force is flexibility and speed:

One former executive described how the company relied upon a Chinese factory to revamp iPhone manufacturing just weeks before the device was due on shelves. Apple had redesigned the iPhone’s screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly line overhaul. New screens began arriving at the plant near midnight.

A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day.

“The speed and flexibility is breathtaking,” the executive said. “There’s no American plant that can match that.”

…In part, Asia was attractive because the semiskilled workers there were cheaper. But that wasn’t driving Apple. For technology companies, the cost of labor is minimal compared with the expense of buying parts and managing supply chains that bring together components and services from hundreds of companies.

For Mr. Cook, the focus on Asia “came down to two things,” said one former high-ranking Apple executive. Factories in Asia “can scale up and down faster” and “Asian supply chains have surpassed what’s in the U.S.” The result is that “we can’t compete at this point,” the executive said.

Okay, so it comes down to supply chains, and industrial clustering as it is called in the economics world.  Paul Krugman addresses some of this in one of his blogs, Chinese Manufacturing and the Auto Bailout.  There is no question that this kind of organization of people and resources is highly efficient.  But that misses the whole point raised by the other article, is that really where we want to go?

The second article basically points out the human cost of this kind of organization:

However, the workers assembling iPhones, iPads and other devices often labor in harsh conditions, according to employees inside those plants, worker advocates and documents published by companies themselves. Problems are as varied as onerous work environments and serious — sometimes deadly — safety problems.

Employees work excessive overtime, in some cases seven days a week, and live in crowded dorms. Some say they stand so long that their legs swell until they can hardly walk. Under-age workers have helped build Apple’s products, and the company’s suppliers have improperly disposed of hazardous waste and falsified records, according to company reports and advocacy groups that, within China, are often considered reliable, independent monitors.

Is that where we really want to go?  In fact, should the companies whose products we buy be allowed to tolerate those kinds of conditions.  Apple touts its “ supplier code of conduct that details standards on labor issues, safety protections and other topics. The company has mounted a vigorous auditing campaign, and when abuses are discovered, Apple says, corrections are demanded.”  Yeah right.  As the article points out:

Some former Apple executives say there is an unresolved tension within the company: executives want to improve conditions within factories, but that dedication falters when it conflicts with crucial supplier relationships or the fast delivery of new products. Tuesday, Apple reported one of the most lucrative quarters of any corporation in history, with $13.06 billion in profits on $46.3 billion in sales. Its sales would have been even higher, executives said, if overseas factories had been able to produce more.

Nothing drives the train like greed and profit and if we learned nothing from the BP oil spill, it is that even the best intentions sooner or later get subverted to the bottom line.  Without a government enforcing worker safety and health requirements, they slide.   But my favorite insight is what I have always known starting as a lowly Captain flying in Vietnam.  Generals, Admirals, CEOs, and yes even Presidents rarely really know what is going on even with the best of intentions:

In 2010, Steven P. Jobs discussed the company’s relationships with suppliers at an industry conference.

“I actually think Apple does one of the best jobs of any companies in our industry, and maybe in any industry, of understanding the working conditions in our supply chain,” said Mr. Jobs, who was Apple’s chief executive at the time and who died last October.

“I mean, you go to this place, and, it’s a factory, but, my gosh, I mean, they’ve got restaurants and movie theaters and hospitals and swimming pools, and I mean, for a factory, it’s a pretty nice factory.”

Yeah, for a prison Mr. Jobs.  We see what we want to see when we are successful and we make excuses like this is a better life than they would have had, but then some get killed and don’t have any life at all.  And the question is, if this is the model for success, do we really want that kind of success?  As one current Apple executive said:

“You can either manufacture in comfortable, worker-friendly factories, or you can reinvent the product every year, and make it better and faster and cheaper, which requires factories that seem harsh by American standards.  And right now, customers care more about a new iPhone than working conditions in China”

Somehow I find that troubling.  Is the next new shiny toy worth that cost?

In Mitch Daniels’ Response he began by saying, “The status of ‘loyal opposition’ imposes on those out of power some serious responsibilities: to show respect for the Presidency and its occupant, to express agreement where it exists.“  What a boldfaced lie.  There is no “loyal opposition”, just a group of people who want to see the President fail.  One only has to look at what has occurred over the last three years to draw that conclusion.  There are a record number of filibusters, holding the country hostage to their debt demands, and defeating any attempt at improving the unemployment picture.  We have an ideological divide that does not allow the taking of prisoners anymore.  I wish the President would have made that point far more emphatic in his remarks.  We all know nothing is going to happen and now the critical battle is whether we are going to allow the Republicans to eviscerate government and turn us into a two-class society.  It is as simple as that and there is no middle ground.

On Republican leadership, I think we saw it at its most naked form when Rick Santorum was confronted by a woman who again raised the outrageous nonsense about President Obama being a Nigerian Muslim and Santorum pandered to her beliefs (and the amazing crowd of know-nothings around him).  Mitt shows us his leadership when he panders to positions he has rejected in the past, but anything to get by the primaries.  Newt?  Well if lying, deceit, obfuscation, and generating hate is leadership, then bring on the rope and we can call ourselves the lynch mob country.  Ron Paul at least shows some backbone on his unpopular positions on drugs, wars, and sex, but his racist comments and his zany ideas about anarchy as a way of governing lead us to wonder if he thinks deeply about complex problems.  Some leadership when you lie and pander to mob instincts to lead the nation.

I listened to Eric Cantor (ever notice that most of these people are not very bright?) explain how the State of the Union speech (before he had heard it) was just more of the same failed policies.  Really?  Eric and company have never let the President have his policies without being watered down by booby traps that make them ineffective.  But what really ought to make Americans think is that the same old policies are more tax cuts and less regulation.  That is where we have been for the last 30 years and the result is for all of us to behold.  One of the best offensives is to project your weaknesses on your opponent.  This is one giant example of calling what we have not tried except after WWII when our economy was booming, old worn out policies, while calling more of the same that has brought us down and created a two class society change.  You got to love their chutzpah.  But if we listen and follow them, well kiss you kid’s future goodbye.

The President began to throw down the gauntlet, but he should have learned something from Newt’s rise in the polls.  The rabble like clear lines and firm opposition.  Let’s hope this speech was simply a stepping off point for beginning to draw clear lines, confronting failed ideology, and not the lines themselves.  They need to be much more clear and abrupt or the middle class and the appropriate role of government will be lost.

There was an interesting op-ed in the New York times (South Carolina’s Divisive Vote) about what voters told them as they came out of the polls:

“Two-thirds of voters interviewed in exit polls said they made their decision on the basis of the two South Carolina debates, where Mr. Gingrich exploited racial resentment and hatred of the news media to connect with furious voters…He had a much better sense of the raw, destructive anger at President Obama swirling around a highly conservative and combative state, and he reflected it back to voters everywhere he went. “

Now you can argue that this is the New York Time is editorializing about what Gingrich really sold in his debate performances, but then it is an editorial and for most of us, it was obvious what he was selling.  He also sold blaming the victim with his just get a job and teaching poor (black) kids the lesson of work.  And he connected with these old fat white people’s visceral hate of President Obama.  You know, that belief that he is not really an American. If you don’t think it was a racist appeal then:

“It was Mr. Gingrich who pulled the race into the gutter, where he found considerable support. He repeatedly called Mr. Obama “the greatest food-stamp president in American history,” and lectured a black questioner at Monday’s debate about the amount of federal handouts to blacks, suggesting their work ethic was questionable.  On Thursday, in the derisive tones of a radio talk-show host, he said Mr. Obama’s cabinet looked like Mickey Mouse and Goofy.

If you don’t see blatant racial hatred in this you are blind.  But it gets better:

“In one of the most telling results of the exit polls, most voters said that cutting the federal budget was more important than encouraging job growth. At a time when more than 13 million people remain unemployed, these voters do not want the government to do a thing about it, possibly because it might improve Mr. Obama’s re-election chances. “

Here to me is the worst assertion.  There is no discussion of how to get out of our mess.  There is no rational weighing of economic policies, especially against real outcomes we have seen from conservative policies.  What we see is raw, I got mine, screw you.  This is the crowd who are going to send people to Washington “to work together to solve our problems”?  As the article points out:

“South Carolina has moved sharply rightward since Mr. Obama arrived on the national scene. In 2000, 24 percent of state voters said they were “very conservative,” but that number jumped to 34 percent in 2008. Now it is up to 37 percent, according to exit polls. Two-thirds of Saturday’s voters said they supported the Tea Party, reflecting the election in 2010 of four South Carolina freshmen who are among the most extreme members of the House.”

I think America saw all that is wrong with America and the people  who call themselves very conservative in this part of the countr.  Instead of rational discussions about real solutions for tomorrow what we saw was racial, ideological, and class intolerance, perfectly willing to cast the nation aside to hold on to their piece of the pie.  I hope most Americans have as bad a taste in their mouths as I do after watching these candidates and citizens in action.  There is no hope for an economic resurgence with this crowd.